Contributor(s): Dr Ben S Bernanke, Olivier Blanchard, Professor Lawrence H. Summers, Axel A. Weber | Five years on, the global economy continues to come to terms with the impact of the financial crisis. This event examines the lessons that both economists and policymakers should learn in order to lessen the chance of future crises. Ben S. Bernanke was sworn in on February 1, 2006, as chairman and a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. Before his appointment as...

Contributor(s): Dr Steffen Hertog, Professor Giacomo Luciani, Dr Marc Valeri, Dr Khalid AlMezaini | Although most Arab countries remain authoritarian, many have undergone a restructuring of state-society relations. Lower and middle class interest groups have lost ground, while big business has benefited in terms of its integration into policy-making and the opening-up of economic sectors that used to be state-dominated. Arab businesses have also started taking on aspects of public service...

Contributor(s): Dr Linda Yueh | What drives China's impressive growth and will it continue? Parsing the evidence leads to some surprising conclusions and also points to needed reforms to sustain development in the coming decades. Linda Yueh is director of the China Growth Centre and fellow in economics at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. She is also adjunct professor of economics at the London Business School. Linda's new book is entitled China's Growth: The Making of an Economic...

Contributor(s): Hilary Lawson, Dr Parashkev Nachev, Dr Jaime Whyte | We have seen a gradual erosion of belief in objective truth, but in a world without truth how are we to understand lies? This second event in the series debates the nature of lies and their importance. Are lies necessarily morally wrong, and what is the relationship between lies, power and individual identity? This lecture is the second of a three-part series entitled Error, Lies and Adventure, the first talk 'Beyond Truth:...

Contributor(s): Professor Andrew Abbott | This lecture argues that since excess and overabundance are central phenomena of modern life, we should refound social theory on the concept of "too much of" rather than "too little of." I trace the origin of the scarcity theories that dominate our reasoning, and sketch the outlines of a social theory based on excess. Andrew Abbott is the Gustavus F and Ann M Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology, Chicago University. Abbott's major...

Contributor(s): Evgeny Morozov | Evgeny Morozov will be presenting his latest book To Save Everything, Click Here, which argues that the proliferation of sensors, big data, and social networks have given policymakers the irresistible temptation to solve problems that, perhaps, should not be solved at all - or only solved via democratic debate, not nifty technological fixes. Evgeny Morozov is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (which was the winner of the 2012...

Contributor(s): Professor Ulrich Beck, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Professor Mary Kaldor | The basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin’s strictures now that...

Contributor(s): Professor Ian Goldin | The growing gap between global problems and solutions reflects a crisis in global governance. Professor Ian Goldin will present ideas from his latest book, Divided Nations: Why Global Governance is Failing and What can be done about it? Ian will focus on the financial crisis, the internet, pandemics, migration and climate change to highlight the need for urgent global action and provide proposals as to what is to be done. Professor Ian Goldin is director...

Contributor(s): Dr Daniel Gros, Professor Charles Goodhart, Professor Michael Haliassos | Dr Daniel Gros is director of Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Professor Charles Goodhart, Emeritus Professor of Banking & Finance; director of Financial Regulation Research Programme, LSE. Professor Michael Haliassos is chair for Macroeconomics and Finance, Goethe University Frankfurt; director, Center for Financial Studies, Frankfurt.

Contributor(s): Professor Anne Phillips | In this inaugural lecture, to celebrate her appointment as the Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science, Anne Phillips addresses the status of the human in politics. Is what Hannah Arendt called 'the abstract nakedness of being human' sufficient to establish principles of solidarity or equality? And can we talk of what, as humans, we have in common without thereby dismissing as irrelevancies our gender, sexuality, or 'race'? Anne Phillips is...

Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun | In this lecture LSE Director Professor Craig Calhoun, considers the threats, internal and external to global capitalism.

Contributor(s): Professor Cécile Laborde, Professor Tariq Modood, Professor Anne Phillips | Under the combined criticisms of feminism, secularism and nationalism, multiculturalism is repeatedly being pronounced dead. Has it really reached the end of the road and what are the alternatives? Cécile Laborde is professor of political theory at University College London. Tariq Modood is the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. Anne...

Contributor(s): Dr Isatou Touray | This talk discusses the efforts made by grassroots Gambian activists and community campaigns, as well as external forces, in building resistance to female genital mutilation in one of the few countries in the world where the practice remains not legally prohibited. Isatou Touray is founder and Executive Director of the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP), an organisation which has campaigned for...

Contributor(s): Professor Ali Ansari | Launching his latest book, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran, Professor Ali Ansari will explore the idea of nationalism in the creation of modern Iran, considering the broader developments in national ideologies that took place following the emergence of the European Enlightenment and showing how these ideas were adopted by a non-European state. Ali Ansari is Professor in Modern History with reference to the Middle East at University of St...

Contributor(s): James Dawson, Kate Kingsley, Meg Rosoff | This event celebrates the culmination of the LSE/First Story creative writing competition for key stages 3, 4 and 5 and will include a prize-giving presentation, as well as a reception following the event. Trying new things can be daunting, but also inspiring. In our creative writing trying a new genre or subject, or exploring what new technology has to offer can be liberating. But is it sometimes best to stick to the classics? Find...

Contributor(s): Michael Ward | LSE London's 2013 Lent term seminar series begins on the 14th of January. Speakers from within and beyond academia will focus on many of the implications of the current economic and political environment for London, covering relevant issues such as the road pricing, UK trends in higher education, census data and localism. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London, while...

Contributor(s): Professor Paul Preston, Dr Daniel Beer, Professor Helen Graham, Professor Dan Stone | A discussion of the atrocities against civilians in the Spanish Civil War, the political consequences in Spain today and the parallels with Nazi and Soviet experiences. Paul Preston is Director of the LSE’s Cañada Blanch Centre and author of numerous books on Spain of which the latest is The Spanish Holocaust. Daniel Beer is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Royal Holloway and the...

Contributor(s): Alexis Tsipras | Alexis Tsipras is President of Syriza-USF (Official Opposition Party, Greece). Professor Kevin Featherstone is director of the Hellenic Observatory at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Peter Hall | This presentation explores the origins and consequences of the contemporary crisis of the Euro from the perspective of a varieties-of-capitalism approach to the political economy. It associates the inadequacies of the governing institutions adopted for the Euro with a set of mythologies that was blind to the presence of distinctive varieties of capitalism in Europe and locates some of the roots of the crisis in the problems associated with combining...

Contributor(s): Professor Kishore Mahbubani | 88% of the world’s population lives outside the West and is rising to Western living standards, and sharing Western aspirations. But while the world changes, our way of managing it has not and it must evolve. In this lecture, leading policy thinker Kishore Mahbubani outlines new policies and approaches that will be necessary to govern in an increasingly interconnected and complex environment. This event marks the publication of his new book The...

Contributor(s): Professor David Ferris | This lecture will argue that painting, rather than retreat from the transformation of the visual image announced by photography, has now become photography’s most important interpreter. David Ferris is professor of humanities and comparative literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Contributor(s): Kate Bell, Duncan Bowie, Howard Reed, Zoe Williams | Seventy years ago the Beveridge Report announced the pursuit of a new settlement, one that would dramatically change the structure of Britain for the better. With this in mind, a new project from Class looks at what Beveridge's analysis of society can teach us about the Giant Evils of today and how can we use this to chart an alternative course for a welfare state - orSocial State - fit for a new settlement in 2015. This...

Contributor(s): Professor John Breuilly, Dr Faisal Devji, Dr Mark Hewitson | This discussion will mark the launch of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism edited by Professor John Breuilly. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism comprises thirty six essays by an international team of leading scholars, providing a global coverage of the history of nationalism in its different aspects—ideas, sentiments, and politics. Every chapter takes the form of an interpretative...

Contributor(s): Dr Duvvuri Subbarao | This lecture is in honour of Dr Indraprastha Gordhanbhai (IG) Patel who was the ninth director of LSE from 1984 to 1990. Over the five years through 2003-08 leading up to the global financial crisis, India clocked an average annual growth of 8.7 per cent on the back of wide ranging structural and policy reforms and growing integration with the global economy. By the year 2008, India was the fourth largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity...